6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. IO3 



3. PRINIA HODGSONII CONFUSA, new subspecies 



Type. — Adult male, M.C.Z. No. 129216, collected at Mengtze, SE. 

 Yunnan, December 5, 1920, by J. D. La Touche. 



Upper parts chsetura drab (Ridgway), this color almost pure on 

 front, crown, and nape, faintly tinged rufescent on mantle, rump, and 

 upper tail-coverts (summer) ; dark olivaceous brown, suffused with 

 bright rufous, faintly on front, crown, and nape, strongly on the 

 mantle, very conspicuously on the rump and upper tail-coverts 

 (winter). 



Supraloral region concolorous with crown (summer) ; supraloral 

 streak ashy white (winter). 



The swollen edges of the eyelids orange and the tiny feathers of 

 both eyelids slaty (summer) ; edges of eyelids neither swollen nor 

 brightly colored, the tiny feathers of tne upper eyelid mixed ashy gray 

 and white, those of the lower eyelid ashy white (winter). 



Under parts white, with a broad pectoral band and flanks deep ashy 

 gray, the throat and center of abdomen faintly washed with cream 

 (summer) ; white (very slightly sullied with ashy gray on breast and 

 upper flanks), washed with creamy rufous, faintly on throat and 

 breast but strongly posteriorly (winter). 



Tail short in summer, longer in winter. 



Range. — Yunnan, Tongking, and adjacent parts of Laos. 



In confusa, the northeasternmost form of Prinia hodgsonii, we find 

 the greatest differentiation between summer and winter plumages and, 

 in the latter, the strongest resemblance to the corresponding dress of 

 a race of Prinia rufescens inhabiting the same area. It is evidently 

 this approximation which puzzled Whistler and Kinnear ' and which, 

 at one time, misled Delacour into believing hodgsonii and rufescens 

 mere color phases of a single species. Despite their similarity, how- 

 ever, confusa may readily be known from rufescens by a character 

 which serves equally well to separate all other cohabitant forms of the 

 two species : in the former, the under side of the rectrices is brownish 

 ashy, with black subterminal spot and ashy white tip; in the latter, the 

 under side of the rectrices is ashy brown, with black subterminal spot 

 and rufous gray tip. 



4. PRINIA HODGSONII ERRO, new subspecies 



Type. — Adult female, U.S.N.M. No. 350283, collected at Chieng- 

 mai, 1,000 feet. North Siam, January 24, 1936, by H. G. Deignan. 



^Journ. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc, vol. 2)(>, p. 565, 1933. 



